


i am not like the birds of the sky

by Amiril



Series: Amiril Fic (Not Cover Art) [9]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Asexual Aziraphale (Good Omens), Confused pining, Crusades, M/M, Noah's Ark, biblical cameos, compassion fatigue, drunken conversations, gnostic gospels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-06 08:24:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20288419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amiril/pseuds/Amiril
Summary: Aziraphale realizes that loving everything is functionally equivalent to loving nothing.(Or: Aziraphale spends six thousand years trying to figure out what love is.)





	i am not like the birds of the sky

**Author's Note:**

> Eternal thanks to lacecat, and especially raisinsforsaturday, for betaing, and tolerating my ramblings about various gospels.
> 
> Title from Infancy James

IN THE Beginning, God created the earth. _T__his is where we’ll put mankind,_ she told the angels._ You’re going to love them. _

And so they did.

* * *

She gives Aziraphale a flaming sword and tells him to stand guard, so he turns his back on the greenery and looks out at the desert. At sparking new sand dunes, all the way to the curve of the earth. 

A lion prowls amongst them, and Aziraphale keeps a close eye on it. 

But for all he wanders, the lion does not seem at all interested in what lies inside the walls. And there is no reason he should be: the lion has no concept of his origins. He may not even know what he is. He certainly doesn’t know how close he is to paradise. 

What made Her decide which animals live in the Garden, and which outside?

Aziraphale doesn’t wonder.

He is looking at the lion, so he doesn’t see the snake. Afterwards, he gives his flaming sword to the fleeing humans because he was told to stand guard, yes, but he was also told to love them.

It’s not as though there will be anything here to protect anymore. 

And what harm could Adam possibly do?

* * *

Lots. As it turns out.

Humans multiply, and they lie, and they kill each other. Aziraphale would like to blame Crawly, but he hasn’t seen him in centuries. 

* * *

They love, too. They build bonds between one another that are unlike anything angels could ever comprehend. 

He would like to give himself credit for that, but he doesn’t know how they did it.

* * *

(Before the Beginning, God created angels.

It never occurred to them to ask why.)

* * *

He doesn’t understand people.

He loves them, but he doesn’t understand them. And he should. He’s been there the whole time— he should be an expert.

But he can’t be, _ because _ he loves them; loves them all the same, and isn’t that the irony? So many of their actions are based around how they prioritize each other, in a way that Aziraphale hasn’t yet learned how to do. They choose their children over others, they fight for the people they love, they fight _ with _the people they love, and Aziraphale realizes that loving everything is functionally equivalent to loving nothing.

Brothers keep killing each other, and Aziraphale stops being shocked.

(He still weeps for all of them.) 

* * *

Children’s songs say two by two, and the Bible says seven each, but Aziraphale remembers the ark as chaos. Animals rounded up at random in the hopes that they’ll get the proper numbers. It’s not as though Japeth could properly sex a centipede anyways.

Aziraphale doesn’t have any tears left. He isn’t sure he ever had enough for all the people who are going to drown.

Crawly has enough feeling for the both of them.

(It’s good to see him.)

* * *

Once there had been a man named Hebel, who lay with his brains in the dirt. His mother had wept for him, and she had wept for her other son, who had killed him.

Later, Aziraphale will wonder if, had he been able to put words to his feelings on love at the time, Chava would have understood him perfectly. She loved the killer and the victim both, after all.

How did she do it?

How did she move on?

She bore Sheth and said he was a replacement for Hebel, but she never said anything about Qayin.

Aziraphale watches the floating corpses.

It’s a bigger thing, when the killer is God.

But human lives were always going to be short, weren’t they?

They've been getting shorter. 

* * *

People die.

People die, and they die, and sometimes Aziraphale doesn’t even notice.

It’s not like they’re really gone, anyway.

(He thinks he might be doing this wrong.)

* * *

“Do you know what love feels like?” he asks Crawly, after they’ve drunk enough alcohol that any observant bartender should be suspicious. 

“What the hell kind of question is that?”

The flood has come and gone, and they’re sitting in a city that’s only a few years away from divine destruction. They don’t know it yet.

“Love,” Aziraphale repeats. “What it feels like. Do you know?”

“Sure, I know. Why? Don’t you?”

“Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it.” He pours himself some more wine. Amazing invention, wine. Does he love it? It makes him happy. But so does Crawly, and Aziraphale doesn’t think he can love Crawly. That wasn’t in the directive. “I’m made of love. But can you feel what you’re made of, really?”

Crawly pinches him.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“No,” the demon says, “but it was funny.”

* * *

Sometimes, humans love naked.

Aziraphale’s flesh isn’t _ him, _not really. There’s no harm in using it to bring someone joy. And maybe it will help him understand.

(It doesn’t.)

It’s not a _ bad _time, per se. But it doesn’t give him any answers. He doesn’t really know what the question was, anyway.

* * *

He stops looking at people, and turns to their stories instead. He reads of Daphnis and Chloe, of Chariclea and Theagenes, and wonders if the answers are right there in the text. _ This is love. This is what it feels like. _But he doesn’t think it’s the kind of love that the Almighty had required of him— this is human love. They invented it. Even though he doesn't think it works that way in reality, they’ve built their fictional worlds around it, and doesn’t that say so much more?

* * *

A woman named Hannah sits under a laurel tree and shouts at the sky. Aziraphale answers.

“The Lord has heard your prayer,” he says. “You will conceive, and your child will be spoken of everywhere people live.”

She’s so grateful that she promises to give the child up as an offering to God.

* * *

The term _shitfaced _hasn't been invented yet, but when he hears it, it will remind Aziraphale of the night they watched Rome burn. He’d done what he could to save who he could, but there’s hardly anything to do, now.

“It’s odd, isn’t it,” he says.

Crowley is tracing pictures in the ashes. “Hmm?”

“Sometimes doing Good means burning cities, and sometimes it’s trying to save them.”

“Aziraphale,” the serpent says. “Is that a question?”

“It’s a statement. An errant thought.” He shouldn’t have said it. There’s a difference between _ thinking, _ which he can’t help, and _ questioning, _which he can.

“I suppose some cities are Bad.” Crowley says it like he’s trying to make Aziraphale feel better. He shouldn’t need demons to make him feel better.

He never used to feel like this, and it frightens him.

Because if he falls, it’s over. He’ll have lost his posting on earth. He’ll have lost the way people smile when he blesses them, and the satisfaction of bringing good to a dark corner. He’ll have lost human stories and oysters and drinks with Crowley.

No question is worth that. 

* * *

It’s easier to love humanity from a distance. To observe their triumphs and failures without knowing their names. It’s easier when he watches with Crowley. He says the things Aziraphale considered thinking, so that Aziraphale knows not to think them, and he’s always quick with a story or a joke.

Gathering intelligence, Aziraphale will say, if someone ever asks him. Even if most of what he’s learned is that he likes it when Crowley smiles.

* * *

Crowley always seems so comfortably _ himself. _Or herself, or themselves— whatever form he’s wearing, whatever fashions or names he’s adopted: he makes them his, and then sheds them when it’s time to be something new.

You can chase the snake out of Eden, but you can’t change what he is.

Aziraphale is self-aware enough to admit that he envies it, a little bit.

He dresses his corporation. He decorates it. He looks for fashions that speak to him: finds colors he likes, and little things with wings, as a joke that only he appreciates. He tries to become himself, but he isn’t sure it ever works.

It might be pointless.

No matter how long Aziraphale spends on earth, it’ll be nothing compared to the time he’ll spend in Heaven.

So he collects the good things, the simple things: stories and food and Crowley’s smiles, because the end is always coming and only the memories will last.

* * *

To this day, he doesn’t know if Yeshua was God’s son.

He’s never been brave enough to ask Gabriel.

“He altered the course of history, as per the Plan,” Aziraphale tells Crowley. They’re sitting under a beautiful tree, and it would be a lovely day indeed if it weren’t for the Crusades.

“It doesn’t bother you? Not to know?”

“I suppose I wouldn’t be able to do my job properly if I did. If I knew some humans were right and some wrong.”

“We already know that,” Crowley says. “But I suppose it must be easier, not to know for sure if you’re supposed to be on _ their _side.” He nods to where a crusader is dragging a young man from a building. They watch, upset, but not upset enough to intervene.

They’ve seen too many cities fall by now.

“I was involved in his mother’s conception, you know. Maryam’s.”

Crowley raises an eyebrow.

A woman peeks out from around the corner of the building. The crusader doesn’t see her, too distracted trying to remove the young man’s teeth from his hand. 

“Not like _ that, _don’t make that face. Her mother was barren. It required a miracle— I was sent to do it. I was glad to do it. Hannah loved Maryam so much she never even put her down. Until she was three, of course, and Hannah gave her to the temple.”

The woman impales the crusader in the back of the neck. 

“She loved her daughter so much that she sent her away?” Crowley repeats. 

“It worked out for her, in the end.”

“Certainly. Maryam got to give up her own son. Watch him be tortured to death.” The crusader bleeds out on the street. “I suppose that’s God’s love for you.”

* * *

Love like Christ did, the Christians say. Love everyone, even those who hate you. Kindness for all. And love that man, especially, you know the one, the most beloved—

No.

Of course they don’t mean it like that.

And they don’t mean the other side of Christ, either. The one who came with the sword. Who smote plants and sold his brother and killed his peers.

(If that’s all true, perhaps he did have a touch of the Divine. But Aziraphale would never insult Yeshua by saying he loved like an angel.)

* * *

There are marks on Crowley’s face when he takes his sunglasses off. Little divots on his nose, and on his temples. Aziraphale wants to trace them with his fingertips. Wants to know if Crowley's skin is warm.

Is that attraction? He doesn’t look at Crowley and turn to thoughts of lust, but what is attraction if not wanting to touch?

He doesn’t ask.

* * *

Partway through the twentieth century, Intimate Books opens its doors next to Aziraphale’s.

Crowley laughs for almost an hour straight.

“Okay, okay, okay,” he says, sitting up again, “I’m over it, I’m—” and then he glances back at the shared wall and starts howling again.

Aziraphale watches him, and tries not to smile.

If he were human, he would say God was testing him. As it is, if God is involved, then She’s probably playing some kind of joke. He’s sure he’s not supposed to go in, but he’s also not supposed to be having a good chuckle with a demon.

Are there answers there? Something that he hasn’t found already?

Surely there’s nothing new. He’s seen worse. Read worse.

But perhaps he should check, just in case.

* * *

There are ways to love, and ways not to love. It’s as true for angels as humans think it is for them.

* * *

_ Love is patient. Love is kind, _Aziraphale tells himself. It might be a lie, because Aziraphale knew Paul, but so did Crowley, and he isn’t sure which bits were his own influence and which were decidedly not.

He can be patient. He’s been on earth for six thousand years, and he’s existed since before there was a way to count time. But kind? Aziraphale isn’t sure he knows how to be _ kind, _not anymore, and he’s certain that Crowley doesn’t either.

Somewhere inside, Crowley is a little good. Maybe it’s a piece of angel, buried alive under snakeskin and sulfur, or maybe it’s been growing the more time he spends around humans and their _ infinite variety. _ Aziraphale sees flashes of it sometimes: a bit of gentleness. A bit of caring. Indignation on behalf of others. Crowley _ likes _humans, but he still takes pride in ruining their lives. He isn’t kind.

And Aziraphale—

Well. He’s Good, but that’s not kindness. He’s never killed anyone, but he’s left them to die often enough. That despair he’d once felt over Hebel feels as if it happened to someone else.

* * *

He is eternal.

Crowley is eternal.

But they won’t be able to spend eternity with each other.

He doesn’t know if the world is ending this century or the next, or in another ten or twenty— but it will end. Aziraphale knows what the Plan entails, and it involves war. It involves Heaven triumphing over Hell, once and for all. The last war wasn’t bloody, because nobody had blood to shed, but it had been _ violent. _ Heaven will fight Hell, and he and Crowley will face each other over a battlefield. And he can’t do that if he knows what it feels like to hold Crowley. To love him. To be loved _ by _him. Heaven will win, the demons will be wiped out or banished, and Aziraphale will face Eternity alone.

It’s not as though he’s human. If he loves Crowley, it doesn’t mean he needs anything from him. He certainly wouldn’t be silly enough to need Crowley to love him back. 

(Love stories always include _ loyalty _ and _ forever, _and Aziraphale can’t offer that.) 

* * *

“I’ll never speak to you again,” he says, because they’ll be dead, because Heaven will ask him to turn his sword on Crowley, to accept humanity as a casualty in this war, and he won’t be able to do it.

She asked him to love mankind, and he had, but he _ likes _them now, too. With their books and sushi and tiny snuff boxes and so many places for he and Crowley to explore.

No one told him to like Crowley. No one told Aziraphale to love him.

And yet.

Here he is.

* * *

And the truth is—

The truth is, Aziraphale isn’t very loyal.

He wants to be. He tries to be. But it’s not until he’s sitting on a bench, destiny in ashes behind him, with no bookstore and only a bottle of wine to his name that he accepts he was never loyal at all.

He lied to Heaven. He lied to Heaven nearly every time he spoke to them. He thought of Heaven as _ them. _

And he wasn’t loyal to Crowley, not when it counted. Not until it was almost too late.

“You don’t have a side,_ ” _ Crowley says, and Aziraphale wonders if that means _ our side _is over, too.

(It isn’t.)

* * *

“Did you ever figure out what love feels like?” Crowley asks, after ingesting enough alcohol to kill four men and a horse.

Aziraphale, who has had enough to kill more than four men but not yet a horse, opens one eye very slowly. “Yes,” he says.

There’s a _ thud _as Crowley rolls off the sofa and onto the floor. “Oh. How did… how did that go?”

_ Wonderfully. Horribly. _

He can feel every time Crowley’s hand has touched his arm, every time their shoulders have brushed, every kiss exchanged when such a thing was expected. He wants to press against him and wring all that stolen warmth from his skin. Find safety with Crowley where there was once surety in God.

He’s drunk enough to reach out and touch Crowley’s ear, because it’s there and they just saved the world and he _ wants _ to. _ I hear you now, _he thinks. 

“I’ll tell you when I find out.”

**Author's Note:**

> [Infacy Gospel of James](http://www.asu.edu/courses/rel376/total-readings/james.pdf) (ft. the story of Anna, and Mary's early life)  
[Infancy Gospel of Thomas](http://www.gnosis.org/library/inftoma.htm) (ft. child Jesus)  
[Acts of Thomas](http://www.gnosis.org/library/actthom.htm) (ft. that time Jesus _technically_ sold his brother into slavery)  
and [an amazing reddit thread on how much alcohol it would take to kill a horse](https://www.reddit.com/r/Horses/comments/5wzg0n/how_much_alcohol_could_kill_a_horse/?utm_source=BD&utm_medium=Search&utm_name=Bing&utm_content=PSR1)


End file.
